TRIPLE E TRAINING HOLDINGS

The South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), under the auspices of the Ministers of Education and Labour, supervised development of the National Qualifying Framework, and guided NQF’s implementation. In the early days, SAQA translated the NQF from paper to practice, determining the meaning of “outcomes-based” and “experiential learning.” SAQA also set qualifying standards for accreditation of ABET providers. SAQA also took responsibility for designing, developing, testing, and certifying assessment tools, and it ultimately determined “bodies responsible” for administering and reporting the results of SAQA assessments.
Now, consistent with its mandate and mission, SAQA manages everything necessary for NQF’s success. SAQA determines who is and is not qualified to conduct ABET classes. SAQA also guarantees its qualifying standards are measured and interpreted consistently and equitably across the nation, and it monitors ABET providers’ retention and certification rates, regularly reporting all of its findings to the Ministers.

Many industrial nations struggle with “school-to-work transition” issues: graduates of their traditional educational systems have neither skills nor values immediately applicable in the workplace. In South Africa, however, industry leaders and educators have collaborated for more than twenty years, developing a sophisticated system that promotes students’ learning for work. In South African industries, the notion of a school-to-work transition seems as foreign because learning environments have been integrated from students’ first day of class. As they complete ABET learnerships, students are assessed according to the standards and expectations in their industries: skills are introduced in the classroom, and classroom activities support students’ acquisition of new skills, but the skills have meaning and value almost exclusively on the strength of their application in the workplace. Educators describe “outcomes-based” assessments. In ABET learnerships, the phrase means that if you cannot do it at work, you cannot do it.

Professional journals and popular media thoroughly show the benefits businessmen and professionals gain when they learn to speak Tswana. Most experts now support that all up-and-coming leaders in business, industry, and any high profession should learn to speak Tswana. This is not only for the sake of advancing their careers, but also to assure the success of South Africa’s bold and ambitious experiment in pluralist democracy.

Even more than shared values and expectations unify society; common language cements the South African cultural diversity. When leaders learn to speak Tswana, they prove their respect for the nation’s disadvantaged workers and citizens. Speaking in a common language, leaders and followers develop a sense of shared activity as they fill their common obligation to a just cause. When professionals of all kinds learn to speak Tswana, they create a bond between themselves and more than four million of their fellow South Africans.